This paper examines the ethical obligations and professional standards that govern the practice of counseling. Drawing on guidelines from the American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA) and the American Counseling Association (ACA), the paper outlines core ethical principles — including autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice, and fidelity — and surveys the range of dilemmas counselors encounter in diverse settings. It addresses challenges arising in rural communities, managed care facilities, online assessment environments, and situations involving technology-revealed truths, while also considering risk-management approaches such as clinical supervision as a practical safeguard against boundary violations.
Counselors have a unique opportunity to help others gain a higher level of fulfillment in their lives. Becoming a professional counselor is often a "calling" that requires education, skills, and training. To become truly professional, however, a counselor must live by guidelines that spring from and parallel their services. Because a counselor develops a relationship with his or her clients, emotions, knowledge, and actions are generated on the part of both client and counselor.
While the counselor seeks to help clients with their difficulties and challenges in life, counseling and psychotherapy may take many forms, including individual psychotherapy, couple and marital therapy, family therapy, and counseling for leaders in business.
Clients who come to professional counselors may experience any of the following: feelings of depression, anxiety, or confusion; concerns about relationships at home or at work; loss or bereavement; feelings of loneliness and an inability to connect with those around them; physical problems with no clear physical cause; a sense that life holds no meaning; fears of rejection if people truly knew them; an eagerness to develop their potential; suffering from trauma or abuse, whether past or present; or a desire to develop personally or professionally — to live a fuller, more satisfying life.
The American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA) provides guidelines for how counselors work with their clients, recognizing that clients experiencing difficulties in their lives are extremely vulnerable and often follow the suggestions of a professional counselor readily. AMHCA members follow the highest professional standards and pledge to abide by the following code:
Mental health counselors believe in the dignity and worth of the individual. They are committed to increasing knowledge of human behavior and to understanding both themselves and others. While pursuing these endeavors, they make every reasonable effort to protect the welfare of those who seek their services, or of any subject who may be the object of study. They use their skills only for purposes consistent with these values and do not knowingly permit their misuse by others. While demanding for themselves freedom of inquiry and expression, mental health counselors accept the responsibility this freedom confers: competence, objectivity in the application of skills, and concern for the best interests of clients, colleagues, and society in general.
Primary Responsibility:
Counseling Plans: Mental health counselors and their clients work jointly in devising integrated, individual counseling plans that offer reasonable promise of success and are consistent with the abilities and circumstances of the client. Counselors and clients regularly review counseling plans to ensure their continued viability and effectiveness, respecting the client's freedom of choice.
Freedom of Choice: Mental health counselors offer clients the freedom to choose whether to enter into a counseling relationship and to determine which professionals will provide the counseling. Restrictions that limit clients' choices are fully explained.
Clients Served by Others: If a client is receiving services from another mental health professional or counselor, the mental health counselor secures consent from the client, informs that professional of the arrangement, and develops a clear agreement to avoid confusion and conflicts for the client. Mental health counselors are aware of the intimacy and responsibilities inherent in the counseling relationship. They maintain respect for the client and avoid actions that seek to meet their personal needs at the expense of the client.
Diversity: Mental health counselors do not condone or engage in any discrimination based on age, color, culture, disability, ethnic group, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, marital status, or socioeconomic status.
Sexual Relationships: Sexual relationships with clients are strictly prohibited. Mental health counselors do not counsel persons with whom they have had a previous sexual relationship.
Former Clients: Counselors do not engage in sexual intimacies with former clients within a minimum of two years after terminating the counseling relationship.
Other areas addressed by the code include: multiple clients (having a relationship with each other), informed consent, conflict of interest, fees and bartering, pro bono service, consulting, group work, termination and referral, inability to assist clients, and appropriate termination (AMHCA, 2000, p. 1).
Counselors are often faced with ethical dilemmas, and sound ethical decision-making must be one of the core skills that a professional counselor cultivates. The appropriate course of action when an ethical situation arises can be challenging to determine. To assist counselors in meeting this challenge, the ACA Ethics Committee developed A Practitioner's Guide to Ethical Decision Making (Forester-Miller & Davis, 1996, p. 2).
This guide identifies five moral principles — autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice, and fidelity — and, like the AMHCA code, spells out guidelines and philosophical attitudes that counselors are encouraged to adhere to as they approach the counseling relationship. The guide recognizes that different professionals may implement different courses of action in the same situation, and therefore acknowledges that there is no simple answer to complex problems. Nevertheless, honesty, along with keeping the best interests of the client at heart and setting aside personal motives, should guide the counselor's actions (Forester-Miller & Davis, 1996, pp. 2–3).
Researchers who investigate ethics for professional counselors, such as Cottone and Claus, find a wealth of information in the literature. However, they note that, while new models are being assessed, "few models seem well grounded philosophically or theoretically" (2000, p. 275).
"Ethics issues in rural, managed care, and technology settings"
"Supervision strategies to prevent boundary violations"
In each of the environments where counselors work, there are factors that create the chance — and occasionally the perceived mandate — to make a bad ethical choice. As job opportunities for counselors rise in number and variety of setting, counselors may be entering the profession less well educated and trained than their predecessors.
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